A Street Encounter And An Abduction

This is quite a long post because I want to tie some events together. This all starts back in 1973 when we had moved to new Zealand we lived there for just a few short years....

In 1973 and 15 years old I left school to start my first job. The only incident between then and our return to the UK in 1974 was in the Summer of 1973 when I got talking to a kerbside vagrant I would frequently see sitting in a side-street in town. I passed this way to work which is why I struck up a bit of a conversational relationship with him. I was curious about him and would ask him questions about why he lived the way he did and what he got out of life. My bonding, if it could be called that, was created because he said much of what I felt. Being outside of society and not relating in any way at all to the people around him. 'I might as well be from another planet'. I recall him saying to me. I found myself beginning to talk to his man about myself, the things I did, the places I liked to go, to be alone and think. How I felt about not fitting in. Yet, in something like three months of talking to him it never once crossed my mind to ask him his name
 1974 and we were back in Reading UK, my 'fathers' business in NZ never having succeeded to any degree. He eventually faced his family with an ultimatum, 'do we go home or do we try again but in Australia?' They knew this would be their last journey so decided to come back to the UK rather then risk being marooned in Australia.

In 1975 I was working in an electrical retail store in Reading town centre, the job was boring and very uninteresting, my spare time had become consumed with writing science fiction and fantasy, my dreams and imaginings of far-off worlds and alien civilisations. I began writing with a view to being an established author, but soon it became apparent that my writing would not be good enough for publication. This didn't deter me because I found so much pleasure and solace in my imaginings.

One day in the Summer of 1975, (a blistering hot day.) I was working in the shop, (dusting shelves or some other boring exercise.) when a man came into the shop. I was the only staff member working at that moment, so went to the counter to serve him. He began by asking about freezers, he claimed he wanted one for his home. He was quite an old man with closely cropped hair to his scalp and wore a very neat suit with such immaculate creases in the trousers. He looked every part a businessman. He had vivid blue eyes and quite remarkably unlined skin. (how I determined he was 'quite old' I have never been able to reconcile with myself.)

Somehow the subject shifted from domestic freezers to me and we were talking about my childhood. He asked me where I had lived, what I did in my spare time and then asked if I had ever been abroad. (many of his lines of questioning seem odd and totally irrational now, but didn't seem so at the time.) When I said yes, I had been abroad, he jumped in and said 'New Zealand?'
I was surprised to hear him say this, and when I said yes, it was new Zealand, he began to tell me about my life there and how I never felt comfortable anywhere. He then reminded me of a vagrant I used to stop and talk to. (I had forgotten the vagrant until he reminded me at that moment.) This stranger was able to rattle off a lot of what my conversation with the vagrant and I simply stood speechless and bewildered. This man then old me he knew me very well and that I had a purpose being here, he said he knew and understood why I felt like an outsider but that I was important for me to be here. There was little more conversation than that, he picked up the freezer brochures I had selected for him, smiled and said 'be strong', and left without another word.
 It was just a year later, 1976 that I suddenly developed 'petty-mal epilepsy' This struck one evening with absolutely no prior warning. On an evening in February 1976 I was watching The Six Million Dollar Man when all of a sudden I had the strange sensation that the sounds in the room and from the television were not identifiable but were hitting me as one garbled sound, like a kind of 'white noise' of distorted sound. I remember no more because apparently I passed out. My aquaintance with epilepsy lasted two years before leaving me alone in 1978, and it abandoned me just as suddenly as it had arrived.
 I had one really close call while I had epilepsy. At the time I had a German Shepherd dog who's name was Jack, (he later died in 1980). I was walking him on his usual late night jaunt round the local park and playing fields one frozen January night in 1979, I think it was between 11pm and midnight, when suddenly I felt an epileptic seizure coming on. I stopped walking as the world began to spin crazily as I began to black out. Then the frozen, ice-hardened ground rushed up to meet me.
I woke up in hospital and apparently I had not been found for several hours. Because a man walking for an early shift at work had heard a dog barking continuously from somewhere in the park, the animal sounded in some distress and that is what prompted him to leave the pavement and enter the park. It would have been pitch black in there and as he remarked to me much later, it was only the dog barking that led him to me.

I was frozen cold and the rescuer even thought I might be dead as he raced for the nearest phone box to summon an ambulance. I don't think I even woke the following day because although I know I walked Jack on Sunday night, I have no further memory until Tuesday morning and the Doctor said I was out of most of that time. I was lucky to survive that.
 In 1981 when I was 23, I met a lady who was very much older than myself. Shelagh had a son and she existed in an impossible marriage with an abusive, alcoholic husband. I met her through an idea I had to form a re-enactment society, with an impossible notion that it would be themed on Roman gladiatorial combat. (costs of reproduction helmets and weapons would have killed this idea stone dead at the starting gate.) Nonetheless I hand-wrote a postcard and put it in my local newsagent window for just one week. I had one single response, that came from Shelagh who said she had a love of Ancient Rome so she and her son would like to join. Needless to say, the re-enactment group idea died a death but Shelagh and I became very firm friends and I began spending a lot of time with her walking her dog and chatting about numerous subjects.

These chats invariably came round to the occult and Wicca, subjects Shelagh knew such a great deal about, and the reason for her knowledge became clear when eventually she told me that in the 1950s she had been High priestess in a Wiccan coven in he New Forest. This would have been a Gardnarian coven as this was the time and place where Gerald. B. Gardiner was establishing the modern Wiccan framework. She always remained very secretive about the coven work, she took her initiation vows very seriously indeed even though she admitted the coven ceased to exist long before 1981. On other occult and pagan topics she was very open and forthcoming with views and opinions if I asked for them.

In March 1981 I needed to leave my rented room and sought elsewhere to live. Shelagh had a spare room and usually took university students in. As it happened the room was vacant, it's student occupant suddenly deciding a few weeks earlier to leave. So she decided to let me rent it. This was a wonderful suggestion because we were getting on great as friends, and if nothing else, our mutual interests helped deflect her from a drunken husband who's Saturday night binge in the pub had her locking herself in her bedroom by 10pm at the latest. I became aware of how bad things were for her when she said to me. 'I told him just months after marrying him, I don't plan to grow old with him. I will leave him long before then'.

When I moved in, Shelagh began to open out her library to me. I marvelled at shelf after shelf packed with books dealing with the breadth of occult and witchcraft. She had books from old stalwarts such as Sybil Leek, one of the first English witches to really go public with her craft in the 1960s. I particularly took an interest in some of the Theosophical books she had, especially those that mapped out the astral and mental planes o existence. I read all of her Lobsang. T. Rampa, an author who spoke quite vividly of being a lama in Tibet before spending the second part of his life in the body of an Englishman by then name of Cyril Henry Hoskin. I also read the books by Ruth Montgomery, of primary influence on me was her book, 'Strangers Among Us' which introduced me to the concept of 'Walk-ins' A 'walk-in' being a person whose original soul has departed his or her body and replaced with a new soul, either temporarily or permanently. This is done contractually before birth, it is not a forced process, nor is it to be confused with 'possession'. A 'Walk-in' often happens when someone has a 'mission' or purpose usually involved in aiding and assisting the collective consciousness of mankind.
 One day we were discussing UFOs, the subject that didn't particularly enthuse Shelagh because it 'is boring'. I had for a time been a member of Contact UK and received their quarterly review of sightings and experiences across the world. Then when I mentioned a case which involved missing time for the witnesses, Shelagh told me of a strange day in her life in the Summer of 1975.

She had walked her German Shepherd dog, Kali, through what was then a sprawling wooded area in the Reading University campus on Whiteknights Road. This campus was open to the public who would often walk their dogs around it's well-trodden woodland paths.

Shelagh used to exercise Kali at a regular time every afternoon so she could be home in plenty of time for when her son finished school at 3.30pm. So her dog-walk would start at 2.30pm and bring her back home for about 3.15pm. She then said that on this particular day seven years previous, she had gone on her usual route, at the usual time. But something went wrong with her plan, because although she walked the woodland tracks as usual and letting Kali run free off her leash, as she was heading out of a clump of trees, she suddenly felt there was something 'wrong' that she couldn’t identify. All she could say was that the day suddenly ‘looked wrong’.

She arrived home, removed her coat and refreshed the dog’s water bowl, (She remark that Kali immediately set to drinking the entire bowlful in one session, a noteworthy difference from usual. Then she walked into the sitting room and saw Julian sat watching television, not only that but her husband was home as well! - and he didn’t usually finish his job till 6pm!

'Where the hell have you been!’ was his response at seeing her walk in.

'Walking Kali, why?’ Shelagh told me that even as she replied, her over-riding question was What are you both doing home so early?
 Then her husband pointed at the wall clock,’But where have you been?’
 Shelagh glanced at the clock and received her second shock, the time was a little after 6.30pm - over three hours later than it should be. Then she realised why the day looked ‘wrong’, I was because the sun was three hours lower in the sky.

This missing time episode intrigued me, BUT what I hadn't realised at this time was her missing time had occurred same month and same year as the stranger coming into the electrical store and telling me all about myself and about me being here for an 'important' reason. That consideration simply didn't occur until much later!

I knew a professional hypnotherapist, who was a member of the local Magic Circle conjuring club that I was an on and off member of, I had an interest in close-up card magic although I never really got much good at it. I approached Len and asked if he might be an interested in having a subject to regress back a few years. I didn't suggest to either Shelagh or Len there might conceivably be a link to alien abductions. I saw myself as something of a UFO investigator and so tried to uphold a degree of what I thought was professionalism. All I told Len was that Shelagh might have an interesting experience to uncover from a memory block in the summer of 1975.

He arranged the appointments with Shelagh, and within a couple of weeks we began he exploration of the lost three and a half hours. Len initially noted down what verifying data he could, such as details of her clothing, newspaper headlines for the particular day, any small details he could find that might support the authenticity. The dog-walk started at 2.05pm, according to her hypnotic recall, and initially did not deviate from her course. This took her down the side of the school her son attended and onto the campus which was on the far side of the school playing-fields and tennis courts. Everything seemed to be progressing normally, and to be honest, I was expecting her to suddenly develop signs of a seizure of some kind that might have explained the time lapse in her memory.
 Then, about halfway round her familiar circuit, she mentions 'something in the trees, like a shiny metal disc in the tops of the trees.' The trees she identified as some distance away across open ground and well of of her route. Nonetheless she felt compelled to walk over to investigate. There was a pause of some moments as she covered the distance in her mind, but the pause was broken occasionally with her remarks about the 'shiny disc flashing brightly in the sunlight.' She reached the edge of the trees on the other side of a small river spanned by a wooden bridge, which she crossed. Then the unexpected suddenly kicked in.
 Oh ….!’
What’s wrong?’ Len asked calmly.

I don’t know, I’m going through something.’
 
Can you describe it?’

I don’t know what it is - it’s like thick ropes and thin threads, thousands of them, they look like they are made from mist and all hanging down from the sky - my God! - it’s even hanging down from the trees!’
Describe to me what is happening.
 I can feel that I’m brushing through this stuff. I’ve stopped and I’m looking around, and…and…I…I’m lost, it’s all around me …oohhh which way is out!’

There was a lengthy pause. Len indicated for me to prompted her.

 
Are you still lost?’ I asked
 
I’m in somewhere.’

Her tone had suddenly changed, just moments before, she had sounded as lost and confused as she described. But her last remark was calmer and much more relaxed. We also thought her voice contained a dreamlike quality about it.
 Where are you?’

I don’t know.’

'Describe what you are seeing.’

What she started talking about next took us all by surprise.

‘A room, a white round room. They are at the end of the room on a raised bit.’

‘Who? Who are at the end of the room?’

‘I don’t know, things - they are …ohhh my dog! Where is she!

Unprompted, Shelagh relaxed a moment later.

‘Where is the dog?’ Len asked

‘She’s stood near me, but I don’t understand it, she’s frozen.’

‘What do you mean, frozen?’

‘Like a film that’s stopped in mid-stride.’

He then asked her how many people or things were in the room.

‘No people, just things. Three on a raised bit, and one off to my left.’

Curious about where she was, she was asked to describe her environment, we already had that she was in a white, round room with a ‘raised bit’ at the end. She went on to describe banks of lights behind the three beings at the far end, and midway between them and her was what looked like a dark gray steel table.

The beings she described as bipedal reptilians, and she made a continual reference to their necks which she described as 'like a turtles. Long, with stretched and wrinkled skin.' She estimated their height at about 1.8m. Their hands articulate, long and clawed. She was then unnerved when one of the creatures lifted a hand, and with a single finger, beckoned her forward.
An instant later, and with no recollection of moving, she found herself standing beside the table with the three beings off the 'raised bit' and now directly in front of her. Then with not a word being said between her or the beings, and as she gazed into the black pits of eyes of one of them, she felt information poured into her mind. Masses and masses of information that slipped past her consciousness at a blinding speed. She tried to grasp it, become aware of what was going into her head, but she couldn't. Then as suddenly as it started, it stopped.
The creature that had fixed Shelagh with it's eyes and conducted the informaition transfer, inclined it’s head very slightly to one side and again, with no awareness of having made a move, Shelagh was face-down on the table and fully aware of the three beings crowding around the table.
‘Oh God!’

‘What is it? What’s the matter?’

‘My back! They’ve pushed something into my spine!’

Len questioned this but she could add no more, just that something cold had been pushed into the base of her spine. She described it as like ‘a cartridge being rammed into the breech of a shotgun’. A sudden downward then sharp upward movement.

‘What is happening now?’

‘I’m no longer on the table, I’m standing before them.’

‘Have they said anything at all? Have you asked anything?’

‘No, they’ve said nothing, and I don’t feel I want to ask.’

Then the beings guided Shelagh to the wall opposite that from which she came in. This guidance seems to have been the first actual physical movement reported from her. She said she passed through the solid wall and was immediately in among the smoky ropes again. She walked through this and back into open air. She then seemed to be walking with her dog at her heels as though nothing had occurred. I asked her:
‘Can you see anything?’

‘No, it’s all gone. I have to go home and forget what happened.’

‘They told you this?’

‘No, not told me, but I know that’s what they want me to do.’


Len finished the session with Shelagh and the dog walking the remainder of the journey round the woods and back to her house. I did ask her if there was anything unusual about the sky and she immediately said the sun was lower than it should be. This could be a regressed memory, or as a result of going under with that prior knowledge.
As an addition to this experience, in 1990, I discovered that on separate occasions, two security guards on the campus witnessed unidentified lights while passing the bridge on the river. They placed their sightings as above the spot where Shelagh described her abduction experience, apparently the did investiate, assuming it was torchlight, but found nothing to explain the dancing lights.
Len told me he had never encountered a regression like this before, and I was left with what I thought was just a very intriguing story. But I had no idea of the floodgate this regression had now opened.
 There was nothing out of the ordinary for a few weeks until one day we were sitting watching television when suddenly Shelagh looked to me and said she could see a Red Indian stood behind me.

'What does he look like?'

I looked on as Shelagh closed her eyes and attempted to make psychic contact with an apparition only she could see.

'He's at least six-feet tall, he's very tall indeed with a very broad strong face and an amazing head-dress. It is full of eagle feathers and extends all down his back to below his waist.'

'Can you ask him what he wants?'

'He says he's with you.' with her eyes still closed, she points at me to emphasis her comment. ' Yes, he's with you and says you need to learn and get ready.'
Now I was puzzled. 'Ready for what?'

'he's not saying, he's just repeating that you need to learn and get ready.'

'Does he have a name?'
Shelagh went quiet for a few moments and then chuckled to herself. She then spoke. 'I hate Red Indians and Red Indian names, everybody seems to have either a Red Indian or a Chinaman. I have tried to wipe his image and name out of my mind but he keeps repeating it – well, not as words in my mind, I can see him squatting next to sand and he is writing his name in the sand. He says it is Red Eagle. They all seem to be Red Eagles, White Eagles, Running Horse and Squatting badger.'

I suspected she made the last one up, but I got her point. Shelagh had been a long-term member of the local spiritualist church and had in those years come across many mediums and their guides.
Shelagh had always been a natural psychic and had an uncanny knowledge of people as soon as she met them. Once, she recounted a time when as a young child at school, no more than seven years-old, had a massive argument with another girl in the playground and spinning to face her in fury, yelled at the child 'At least my dad is my REAL dad – unlike yours!'

It really hit the fan with that one because no one apart from the girls parents knew they had adopted her as a baby!
So Shelagh's clairvoyance and mediumship had an astonishing track-record and I exploited this over the next few months as her link to Red Eagle seemed a permanent one I plied him with questions. Then some months into this she old me something that changed my world forever.

'Red Eagle is telling me about your time in New Zealand?'

'Really,' I muttered, my attention not focused on her at all.

'Yes, he is showing me some vagrant squatting at the kerb, he's at the side of a road.'

I looked up at her, my attention now fully switched on, I had never mentioned the vagrant. In fact until this moment, I had completely forgotten the event.

She continued. 'I am not sure what he means, but he says that he was that vagrant, that he wanted to see if you would bother to stop and talk to him.'

'He had a life as that man?'

'Shelagh shook her head. 'No, he says he became physical.' she tapped her forearm to emphasis. 'He became a solid form.'
She had been stood with her eyes closed during this conversation because although she was repeating what he had already told her, she still had a link to him. She opened her eyes and looked at me. 'He says you met him twice?'

Then I remembered the man who had come into the electrical shop back in 1975, how he seemed to know all about me and what I did in New Zealand, the man who knew me but never introduced himself. A second later I realised that the man coming into the electrical shop and knowing about me, now claiming to be a temporary physical apparition of Red Eagle happened in the same month and year of Shelagh's abduction by aliens.
This was my epithany, a moment of true awakening. My understanding of why I was here and what I was doing. All this sudden understanding wasn' in any lucid and conscious sense. It was an awareness that brought with it a sense of ease and comfort I had never felt in my life before this moment.